Preschoolers Executive Functions and Quality of Teacher-Child Interaction on Embedded Cognitive Activity: A Ghanaian Study

Abstract

This study examined three questions: how reading with embedded cognitive activity foster preschoolers’ executive functions; what variations exist between groups exposed to embedded cognitive activity and a control group that lacked executive functions engagements and how reading a story with embedded cognitive control varied across three months post intervention period. Using pretest-posttest design with random sampling of estimated 40 kindergarten children, the study measured their executive functions on three variables: Working Memory retention, Inhibition Control and Set Shifting. Overall, the findings indicate that the effect of reading stories with embedded executive function (EF) activities remained strong after the training and across the three-month post-intervention period. Participants in the experimental group consistently demonstrated higher EF activities scores than those in the control group. The similarity in group variances confirmed that the comparison was statistically appropriate. The one-way ANOVA showed a significant difference between groups, while the very large effect size estimates suggest that the sustained differences in EF performance over the three months were largely attributable to the intervention. This implies that the EF-embedded reading activities produced a stable and lasting improvement in executive functioning during the follow-up period.